Mayor Bloomberg went on a spitting-mad rant against a city cab-fleet boss who won a court victory over Hizzoner’s planned “Taxi of Tomorrow” — vowing to “destroy your f–king industry” when he leaves office, The Post has learned.

A fuming Bloomberg made the threat against Taxi Club Management CEO Gene Freidman at Madison Square Garden’s private 1879 Club during last Thursday’s Knick playoff game, a witness said yesterday.

“It was like Gene had kidnapped his child. He used the f-word twice,” the witness said.

Freidman confirmed the blow-up to The Post, and said Bloomberg’s tirade included the warning that, “After January, I am going to destroy all you f–king guys.”

That’s bad news for Bloomberg’s political enemies, who could all become targets once the revenge-minded billionaire has nothing but time on his hands.

Bloomberg says he doesn’t remember the incident. Capital NY Reports:

Friedman also happens to be a member of the Greater New York Taxi Association, whose recent court victory may well permanently undermine the mayor’s Taxi of Tomorrow program.

Today, Bloomberg claimed not to remember the episode.

“The only thing I remember from that night, there was a court,” said the mayor on Wednesday at a school in East Harlem. “It was the court in the middle of Madison Square Garden. And the Knicks won. It was a great game. And I had a great time. It’s what I remember from that night.”

Bloomberg, however, did remember why it is he’s so frustrated with medallion owners, an entrenched industry that’s successfully resisted his reform efforts at every turn, including his bid to create a new fleet of taxis for the outer boroughs.

“Number one, we have to get taxi service for four and a half boroughs that are not taken care of,” he said. “What a disgrace. You get into a taxi and it won’t take you to 80 percent of our city. What kind of a city is that?”

“We also have taxis that don’t have all the facilities we want,” he continued, referring to his Taxi of Tomorrow program, which would usher in a new fleet of New York City taxis, complete with passenger airbags, reading lights, and ergonomic seats for drivers.

Who you gonna believe?

Reader Poll open until 5 p.m. Eastern on May 23, 2013:

But I think it is more than that.

This is what we see in Syria.

A very up close and personal bloodletting and then triumphal braggadocio.

Like the Syrian rebel fighter who ate his enemy’s heart on video. And the very personal violence visited on captives from both sides.

Except that it happened in South London.

The BBC reported sources had told them the men were shouting “Allahu Akbar” as they carried out the attack and had filmed carrying it out.

One witness, called James, told LBC radio: “We saw clearly two knives, meat cleavers, they were big kitchen knives like you would use in a butcher’s, they were hacking at this poor guy, we thought they were trying to remove organs from him.”

“These two guys were crazed, they were not there, they were just animals. They then dragged him from the pavement and dumped his body in the middle of the road.

“They took 20 minutes to arrive, the police – the armed response.”

I think Ben Domenech gets it right:

This is what a society in collapse looks like. vlt.tc/vem

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) May 22, 2013

(more videos and photos at LiveLeak)

Update: Drew M proposes another analogy, Ramallah 2000:

Weiner did so by way of a video that was posted in the early hours of the morning.

“Look, I made some big mistakes,” he says in the video. “And I know I let a lot of people down. But I’ve also learned some tough lessons. I’m running for mayor because I’ve been fighting for the middle class and those struggling to make it my entire life. And I hope I get a second chance to work for you.”

The NY Post reports that the video was actually supposed to be released later in the day.

The video — which came out just a few days short of the second anniversary of the day Weiner tweeted a sext of his bulging undies — ends with a logo: “Anthony Weiner for Mayor.”

Sources told The Post that the oddly timed video was legitimate, but that campaign staffers intended for the announcement to come out later today.

The video was posted on a campaign Web site and was then taken down, and then put back up. It also could be seen on YouTube.

But not everyone believes Weiner deserves a second chance.

The Daily Beast was out Tuesday with a scathing article on Weiner’s character flaws that go well beyond his creepy sexting habit.

Here’s a guy who regularly condescended to every member of Congress but whose intellectual talents were such that he originally aspired to be a weatherman. In Congress, he was the political equivalent of a minor celebrity, famous mostly for being famous: in 12 years, he was the lead sponsor of one bill. He narrowly won his first race, for a seat on the New York City Council, after anonymously sending voters race-baiting fliers. That’s never a pretty sight, but considering he did it immediately after the Crown Heights riots, it puts him in the same slime bucket where anti-Semitic tax cheat Al Sharpton wallows.

The article also highlighted examples of Weiner’s hypocrisy.

His nascent campaign has struggled to attract marquee political strategists, as it has faced the rejection of many potential recruits and instead hired Danny Kedem, a 30-year-old with little experience in New York, as a campaign manager.

“Secretary Clinton knows all of the candidates, she has worked with many of them, and is close with many of them, so won’t be weighing in one way or the other,” Hillary Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement to POLITICO.

Likewise, Bill Clinton spokesman Matt McKenna said, “President Clinton has too many friends in this race who have been good to him and his family. He wishes them all well, but won’t be getting involved.”

Dear Professor Jacobson:

I’m among your many grateful readers, but at this time, the Democrats are like Thomas Crown in the flick, “The Thomas Crown Affair,” who created a distraction over here, while over there, he was stealing a multimillion dollar painting.

But in this case, it’s a total transformation of the American people, by immigration law changes to aid and abet the non-enforcement we’ve had for decades.  All these abuses of power converging at this time are almost COMPLETELY distracting everyone who could bring pressure to bear to prevent the enactment of new law which without question – without question – will alter our demographics and governing philosophy to the point of no return.

I hope you’ll consider going in a new direction.

My response was:

I don’t consider the current fights irrelevant either in themselves or as to immigration. In fact, I think they are quite connected, and it’s possible to fight all at once.

To which she replied:

You may be right. But the bill in the Senate is doing, as they say, famously!

Thanks for the reply. ;^)))

Karen makes a very good point.

Key Republicans have buckled under. The Senate will pass the bill right under our noses.

It is a bad bill. I’ve written against it many times. A group of prominent conservatives recently signed a letter pointing out the deficiencies:

We have a variety of concerns; some of us share only one, others share all. Among these concerns are that the bill:

* Is bloated and unwieldy along the lines of Obamacare or Dodd-Frank;

* Cedes excessive control over immigration law to an administration that has repeatedly proven itself to be untrustworthy, even duplicitous;

* Legalizes millions of illegal immigrants before securing the borders, thus ensuring future illegal immigration;

* Rewards law breakers and punishes law enforcement, undermining the rule of law;

* Hurts American job-seekers, especially those with less education;

* Threatens to bankrupt our already strained entitlement system;

* Expands government by creating new bureaucracies, authorizing new spending, and calling for endless regulations;

* Contains dangerous loopholes that threaten national security;

* Is shot through with earmarks for politically connected interest groups;

* Overwhelms our immigration bureaucracy, guaranteeing widespread fraud.

Reforming our immigration system is an important priority. But S.744 is such a defective measure that it would do more harm than good.

The Gang of 8 bill, if it passes, will go down in history as a mistake as disastrous as Obamacare.  It must be stopped.

Democrats are playing the long game.  Republicans in Congress are acting like scared cats playing a short game for 2014 and 2016.

[Hearings now adjourned]

The moment when she invokes 5th Amendment:

Lerner: I have not broken any laws; I have not violated any IRS regs; I have not done anything wrong #IRShearing

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) May 22, 2013

Lerner full appearance:

After she gave an opening statement and defended herself, Lerner refused to testify and was dismissed from the hearing:

And they want the #IRS to enforce #Obamacare? twitpic.com/csfo8t

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) May 22, 2013

Rep Stephen Lynch suggests special counsel may be necessary re #IRS scandal, if witnesses continue to stonewall. “There will be hell to pay”

— Andrew Stiles (@AndrewStilesNRO) May 22, 2013

“You don’t get to tell your side of the story” and then refuse to answer questions. -Rep Gowdy (R-SC), a former prosecutor

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) May 22, 2013

MT @katiepavlich “We conducted an audit of the IRS, not an investigation” -IG George — very important — NEVER has been investigation #IRS

— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) May 22, 2013

Shulman: It wasn’t my fault…makes excuses, playing dumb.Cummings: “That’s simply not good enough.” #IRS

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 22, 2013

Schulman: “I have no memory of having knowledge of what was on the list.” #IRS

— Andrew Stiles (@AndrewStilesNRO) May 22, 2013

“It is possible that criminal may have occurred, but it is too early” at this point to determine that. -George #IRShearing

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) May 22, 2013

(I’ll limit this to the discussion of unsigned editorials, not op-eds.)

.@ejdionne has it exactly backward. This is not a crisis of democracy, it’s a crisis of authority. washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-di…

— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) May 20, 2013

On May 17, the editors hoped, IRS shake up had better be thorough:

As for motivations, IRS officials have insisted that the agency saw a big influx of applications beginning in 2010 and that its targeting was just an inappropriate shortcut to sort through them. Yet an IRS letter to the inspector general also cited pressure from “the public, media, watchdog groups and members of Congress” to investigate specific 501(c)(4) groups as a factor in its decision making. Does that mean political pressure might also have influenced IRS staff?

Regardless of the origins of the policy, the result for conservative organizations was a hellishly long application process — months, even years. Some were lucky enough only to have to wait. Others had to answer invasive and unnecessary questions about the political affiliations of officers or the activities of those in event audiences. It’s little surprise that since 2009 many more groups with “progressive” in their titles obtained nonprofit status than those with “tea party” in their names.

At seemingly every level in the IRS, leadership failed. After senior managers found out about the targeting, why didn’t they demand that any more changes to the criteria used to sort out applications require their approval? Instead, lower-level staffers were able to revert to targeting after they had been told to stop.

(As for political pressure, read Hot Air.)

On May 18, the editors acknowledged Justice didn’t follow its own rules in AP case:

Alas, that law did not pass, and there’s little prospect that it will anytime soon. So Mr. Obama’s support for it is at best cold comfort and at worst a transparent diversion. The issue remains what Justice did and whether it was consistent with existing legal authority — which consists of the First Amendment and a long-standing department policy designed to prevent violations of it.

That policy clearly says that federal prosecutors will give press organizations prior notice of pending phone-record subpoenas unless doing so would pose a “clear and substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.” Generally, that has been taken to mean a threat that records would be destroyed, but no such threat has been suggested in this case — and none seems likely to have existed, given the fact that the service providers, not the AP itself, had possession of the records.

In a letter to the AP, Deputy Attorney General James Cole invoked the “substantial threat” exception, but he offered no specifics to back it up. He did note that the department had exhausted alternative means of fact-gathering, as its rules require, and alluded to the serious harm done by the alleged leak. Neither amounts to a reason for what appears to be a pretty stark departure from, if not a violation of, the Justice Department’s own rules.

Even with these two editorials, each showing malfeasance (if not corruption) on the part of two executive branch departments, the editors had already written Obama a new Nixon? Oh, get serious. (Granted, malfeasance isn’t impeachable. Both the Treasury and Justice departments both overreached their constitutional authority, but that didn’t prompt any thoughts that the problem could have come from the top. Here’s how the editorial summed up the scandals:

(1) The Benghazi talking points scandal is no scandal whatsoever. The government failed to anticipate the attack on Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and to protect him and those who died alongside him, but there was no coverup of the failure and no conspiracy to deceive the American people about what had happened.

(2) The broad search of telephone records from the Associated Press in search of a government leaker seems, on all available evidence, to have been a dangerous and unjustified violation of normal Justice Department practice, under which Justice should have negotiated with the AP to narrow the search as far as possible. The administration has yet to offer any justification for this violation. There’s no reason to believe that Mr. Obama knew anything about it, and it’s worth recalling that Republicans clamored for the investigation in the first place. But the president’s unwillingness to condemn it is sadly consistent with his administration’s record of damaging the First Amendment in its ill-advised pursuit of leakers.

(3) The IRS targeting conservative opponents of Mr. Obama for special scrutiny is horrifying and inexcusable. We still don’t have a full picture of how the practice originated, how high in the administration knowledge of it rose and how members of Congress came to be repeatedly misinformed on the subject. But there is so far no evidence of White House knowledge or instigation of the practice.

According to the Post, that’s one case of incompetence and two cases of abuse of power.

(Roger L. Simon shows how Benghazi was more than just incompetence.)

But there’s a fourth editorial, worth noting, Kathleen Sebelius dances on an ethical line:

So far, HHS says it has asked only two entities to donate money — the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and tax firm H&R Block — and neither company is regulated by the agency.

But Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) says that Ms. Sebelius has violated the principle that Congress is the body empowered to establish funding levels for the government’s activities and that no administration can short-circuit that process by soliciting and directing donations for things it deems important. In a letter to Ms. Sebelius, he argues that her actions “may violate federal appropriations laws,” and he demands information on how much HHS has coordinated with Enroll America.

The legal question is still murky. The ethical one is less so. The Post’s Sarah Kliff, who broke the story, reports that at least one official in the health-care industry feltpressure to give money and other forms of support to Enroll America. Given that HHS directly controls the markets in which the insurers operate, we would hardly blame them for reading a lot, even too much, into the secretary’s requests and feeling nervous about them. But even if they didn’t, it would have been easy to expect donations to curry favor with Ms. Sebelius.

In order to make the impossibility called ObamaCare work, Sebelius solicited funds outside of her department’s mandate. Depending on how one views Benghazi, this is the third (or fourth) overreach by a cabinet level department. Are these overreaches isolated occurrences or are they part of a pattern?

I believe it is a pattern. Recently, James Taranto explained the mindset that would lead these excesses.

Moral authority entails a moral hazard: the temptation to abuse political and cultural power. Today’s liberal left conceives of itself as being on the side of all that is good, right and reasonable. It caricatures the right as racist, extremist, greedy, dishonest, fanatically religious, prone to violence–and dangerous because, through the Republican Party, it has maintained parity in the political arena. Of the 10 presidential elections since Watergate, each party won 5; and voters haven’t entrusted the Democrats with full control of government for more than two years since the Carter era.

If ordinary politics are a battle between good and evil, then winning becomes an overriding moral imperative. The end justifies the means: Journalists shade or conceal the truth in the service of a “larger truth.” Government restricts political speech in the name of promoting democracy. Administrative agencies perpetrate injustice in the name of “social justice.” That’s how IRS agents could think it was their patriotic duty to help fix an election for the party in power.

These wrongful actions subvert the institutions with whose stewardship the perpetrators have been entrusted. They also undermine the moral authority of those institutions’ leaders.

President Obama and his allies are so certain of their own civic righteousness they see their goals as justifying any means.

The role of the media in these scandals is also amazing. As James Taranto observed:

The current crisis of authority very much includes the news media, which in significant measure have abdicated their guiding principles of impartiality, objectivity and sometimes even accuracy.

Liberal media bias is an old complaint, but the Obama presidency has given it a new and dangerous form. Never has the prevailing bias of the media been so closely aligned with the ideological aims and political interests of the party in power. The American media remain free and independent, or you would not be reading this column. But to a large extent they have functioned for the past few years as if they were under state control.

They denied that Benghazi was a scandal and accused anyone of making that claim of politicizing a tragedy. They ignored claims of conservative groups that they were being unfairly targeted by the IRS.

RT @instapundit: HOW THE PRESS CAN STRIKE BACK: Just start covering Obama—on everything—the way you would if he were a Republican #Toast

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) May 20, 2013

True, now that the election is over some are waking up to the IRS scandal at least. It’s odd that the same folks who believe that democracy is served by having more voters, apparently didn’t think that democracy is served by voters having more information.

And, of course, even now, there are still those who say that administration’s problems are only political.

Look forward to reading tomorrow’s pieces explaining how GOP is overplaying hand by pointing out thatLerner is pleading 5th.

— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) May 21, 2013

Nonpartisan observer Charlie Cook: GOP’s hatred of Obama could lead to overreach and backlash: washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-lin…

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) May 21, 2013

As Tea Party groups stage successful rallies at Internal Revenue Service offices nationwide, one California organization is staging a frontal assault on this government behemoth.

One of the largest and most active Tea Party groups in the nation is filing the first of what is expected to be many lawsuits against the government for allegedly singling out conservative organizations.

The NorCal Tea Party Patriots, based in northern California, claim the IRS violated its rights when it either held up or rejected its applications for tax-exempt status….

The NorCal lawsuit was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of Cincinnati. The suit seeks group status for “all conservative and libertarian groups targeted for additional scrutiny” between March 2010 and May 2013. It’s also seeking unspecified money damages for the alleged violation of their constitutional rights and the costs associated with trying to comply with the IRS demands.

The lawsuit is being backed by Citizens for Self-Governance, a group launched by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler.

Click on image to read full complaint.

“It is important that affected citizens get involved in this fight,” said Meckler. “While it is nice that House of Representatives wants to address complaints about this IRS, it is important to remember a few things. The IRS was created by Congress. The IRS is funded by Congress. The idea Congress is going to fix the IRS is laughable. All of this abuse happened on their watch. That is why we need Americans to be engaged.”

Meckler is encouraging everyone whose group applied for non-profit status as a conservative group and was harassed or unduly burdened by requests from the IRS to join the class action lawsuit. For further information, check www.SueTheIRS.com or click HERE to complete the application form directly.

Dawn Wildman, President of San Diego’s SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition whose failures in obtaining a non-profit status with the IRS was recounted here previously, shares more background on the challenges faced by our Northern California compatriots: “NorCal got reamed, with justifications, information requests, and outright bias during their application process. The IRS made it a complete and total nightmare for them to get non-profit status.”

It was only after a local Republican congressman got involved that the NorCal Tea Party Patriots obtained their non-profit status.

So as you look at all the images in front of IRS offices from yesterday, know that the front line of this battle is moving to a courtroom soon!

Then it was Rosen’s parents’ phone records.

Shannon Bream just reported on Hannity that court records appear to reflect phone records were obtained for multiple Fox News lines at multiple locations. The records were partially redacted, but the area codes and exchanges match up.

I’ll join @seanhannity in minutes – with latest on govt’s probe into @foxnews employee/office records/phones

— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) May 22, 2013

DOJ seized phone records of numbers tied to Fox News lines, documents show:

Newly uncovered court documents show the Justice Department seized phone records associated with several Fox News lines as part of a leak investigation — a revelation that comes as the White House Correspondents’ Association spoke out against the administration’s monitoring of reporters.

Documents from October 2011 appear to show exchanges that match the specific locations of Fox News’ White House, Pentagon, State Department and other operations. The last four digits of each of the phone numbers listed are redacted in the government filing so it is impossible to know the full numbers.

Ryan Lizza at The New Yorker reports:

The Obama Justice Department has seized the phone records of numbers that are associated with White House staffers and, apparently, with Fox News reporters, according to a document filed in the case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, on October 13, 2011. Kim is a former State Department contractor accused of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking classified information to James Rosen, a Fox News reporter. Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is prosecuting the case, has seized records associated with two phone numbers at the White House, at least five numbers associated with Fox News, and one that has the same area code and exchange as Rosen’s personal-cell-phone number (the last four numbers are redacted).

U.S. v. Stephen Jin-Woo Kim Notice of Filing

And that certainly would fit in with the defensive narrative whenever Obama fails at anything — it’s a messaging problem, not the message, and definitely not Obama.

As the administration can’t keep its story straight on just about anything, the messenger will be taken out.

That’s how it’s supposed to go.

Carney, however, seems to want to hasten the process:

“Do the questions raised about HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her efforts  to raise funds though the private sector for Enroll Now fall into that  category?” asked Major Garrett, CBS News’ chief White House correspondent, as  regards recent scandals to which the White House has been forced to  respond.

“We can go down the list of questions,” Mr. Carney replied. “We  can say: ‘What about the president’s birth certificate. Was that  legitimate?’”

“I’m asking about Sebelius,” Mr. Garrett said. “I’m not  asking about that.”

(video added, h/t Hot Air)

It will go something like this: “I have resigned my position because the Republicans and some in the media have sought to make me the issue. It’s not about me. There is too much to be done to allow distractions regarding me to become distractions. You’re not going to have me to kick around anymore.”

Update - They are losing the messaging war, Fox News poll: Majority thinks White House knew about IRS actions

Voters are concerned about the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of  conservative political groups for unfair treatment, and over half think the  White House either knew it was happening or — worse yet –was actually behind  the operation.

That’s  according to a Fox News poll released Tuesday.

How bad is it? 47% of Democrats and 44% of Liberals think Obama knew or directed the targeting of conservatives.

Lerner was scheduled to answer questions from the House Oversight committee this Wednesday.

According to the LA Times, which obtained the letter Tuesday, Lerner’s attorney, William W. Taylor 3^rd, wrote to committee chairman Darrell Issa to request that Lerner be excused from appearing before the committee.  Taylor explained that with the criminal investigation launched by the Department of Justice, Lerner’s appearance would have no purpose other than to “embarrass or burden her.”

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, R-Calif. The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times. […]

Since Lerner won’t answer questions, Taylor asked that she be excused from appearing, saying that would “have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.” There was no immediate word whether the committee will grant her request.

More to follow.

UPDATE 4:20pm EST:  Issa has issued a subpoena to Lerner anyway.

UPDATE 5:00pm EST:  Ali Ahmad, Communications Adviser for the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, provided the following statement to Legal Insurrection:

The Committee has been contacted by Ms. Lerner’s lawyer who stated that his client intended to invoke her 5th amendment right and refuse to answer questions.  Ms. Lerner remains under subpoena from Chairman Issa to appear at tomorrow’s hearing — the Committee has a Constitutional obligation to conduct oversight. Chairman Issa remains hopeful that she will ultimately decide to testify tomorrow about her knowledge of outrageous IRS targeting of Americans for their political beliefs.

And that whole truth is that what happened was a partisan attack on behalf of a sitting president against his political opponents.  It was not just a mistake, or mismanagement, or any of the other lame excuses being cast about to distract from the partisan nature.

Via HuffPo, IRS Commissioner Contradicts Earlier Testimony, Says Tea Party-Targeting Was Partisan

The head of the Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday, in his second day of sworn testimony before congressional committees, admitted under questioning that the agency’s targeting of tea party groups was a partisan act.

“It absolutely was,” said Steven Miller, acting commissioner of the IRS, when asked by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) if the agency acted in a partisan manner.

Miller had said in his opening statement to the Senate Finance Committee that the targeting was “not an act of partisanship.” The question of whether the IRS personnel who targeted tea party groups acted in a partisan way has implications for whether they broke laws such as the Hatch Act, which forbids government employees from engaging in partisan political activity….

BURR: Mr. Miller, let me just ask you. Has this practice stopped?

MILLER: What practice, sir?

BURR: The practice of how they process the consideration of these applications — keywords “conservative,” “tea party,” “patriot”?

MILLER: I believe that that did happen. The names stopped when — last in — when Lois Lerner first learned of it. The second listing, by the way, if you take a look at that, in the Treasury inspector general’s report, is still problematic because it talks about policy positions, but it actually is not particularly partisan in how it talks about policy positions.

BURR: So it was partisan — it was partisan before, though.

MILLER: Yes, it absolutely was.

In another interesting development demonstrating why a special prosecutor with the power to take testimony under oath is needed, the Inspector General admitted that his Report was not the result of taking testimony under oath:

J. Russell George, the inspector general, repeated that his audit turned up no evidence that anyone in the White House or in senior IRS management directed the improper screenings. He said the examination was not an investigation, and employees were not under oath, and said his agency would be following up.

And senior IRS officials and officials in the Treasury Department were behind the planted question (background here) which revealed the targeting for the first time:

Nearby at a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew acknowledged Tuesday that there was contact between his agency and the IRS on the planned plant.

“There were some conversations at a staff level between Treasury and IRS. You know, there are — it is — was the discretion of the IRS to decide how to manage this matter,” Lew said in answer to questions from Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho.

This video explains the insanity of the raid and ultimate charges — very technical and disputed interpretations of Indian law as to the importation of wood used in the guitars. This had nothing to do with conservation or protection of forests, it had to do with India keeping jobs in India, and insane paperwork requirements in the U.S. The trees would have been cut and the wood used regardless of how Gibson filled out the paperwork:

“The issue here is not illegal logging or some conservation abuse,” Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz told Reuters and other reporters last October. “The laws that are being identified by the Department of Justice have to do with protectionism by the country of origin, keeping work in that country and therefore not allowing something that isn’t that value-added to be exported.”

The Gibson Guitar prosecution smacked of partisan politics (h/t Instapundit), and although it ultimately agreed to a settlement to avoid the costs of defending the case, the absurdity of the charges remained:

On Aug. 24, 2011, the Department of Justice sent armed agents into the Gibson Guitar factor in Memphis “confiscating half a million dollars worth of guitar making material is an alleged violation of environmental standards.”

Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz is a conservative, and his company eventually settled rather than take matters to court.

Nashville-based Gibson agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty, forfeit claims to about $262,000 worth of wood seized by federal agents and contribute $50,000 to theNational Fish and Wildlife Foundation to promote the conservation of protected tree species.

We felt compelled to settle as the costs of proving our case at trial would have cost millions of dollars and taken a very long time to resolve,” CEO Henry Juszkiewicz said in a statement late Monday night….

“We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted, and a matter that could have been addressed with a simple contact a caring human being representing the government,” he said in his statement.

Gibson also forfeited an estimated $1 million in wood it purchased.

Civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate wrote about the outrageous gag order the government insisted on as part of the settlemement, Gibson Is Off the Feds’ Hook. Who’s Next?

Did Gibson acquiesce in this settlement solely to end the expense, distraction, danger and agony of a federal criminal prosecution—the usual reasons for shouting “uncle” to Uncle Sam? We will never know. Why? Because federal prosecutors required, as part of the “criminal enforcement agreement,” that Gibson not only “accept[s] and acknowledge[s] responsibility for the conduct” alleged, but also that the company’s “public statements regarding this Agreement will not contradict the statement of facts” set forth in an appendix to the settlement agreement.

Put another way, Gibson is now forbidden to tell the world the whole truth about its conduct and its reasons for settling a case it previously claimed publicly, including in an opinion piece in this newspaper, involved no criminal conduct on its part. In exchange for agreeing to read the government’s script, Gibson regained its ability to conduct business without a federal sword of Damocles dangling over its corporate head.

This naked effort by federal prosecutors to control both news and outcomes, not to mention their own reputations, does not surprise those familiar with the modern federal criminal justice system….

Guess who was a big supporter of this witch hunt against Gibson Guitar.

None other than Massachusetts Congressman and now Senate candidate Ed Markey (h/t Instapundit):

Markey crowed about Gibson Guitar’s capitulation, as if this were some big environmental victory:

“Gibson’s admission of wrongdoing is a win for the Lacey Act, a win for U.S. jobs and a win for consumers who can be assured that illegally trafficked ‘blood wood’ won’t be used to make their guitars,” Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement.

Markey’s press statement was all on board with the vigorous prosecution and attempted to turn it into a political issue regarding the Tea Party:

“Gibson’s admission of wrongdoing is a win for the Lacey Act, a win for US jobs and a win for consumers who can be assured that illegally trafficked ‘blood wood’ won’t be used to make their guitars,” said Rep. Markey, Ranking Member of the House Natural Resources Committee. “Gibson, the Tea Party and House Republicans attempted to gut the Lacey Act by changing the law in Congress before the case against the guitar maker was resolved. I commend the hard and deliberate work of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Justice Department to bring this case to a close.

Markey even suggested Gibson Guitar had used “blood wood”:

Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., applauded the settlement and thanked musicians who signed a pledge opposing “blood wood,” or wood imported into the U.S. that violates native countries’ logging laws.

“I would also like to praise Sting, Dave Matthews Band, and Guster, along with the multitude of musicians and other individuals who stood up for the Lacey Act and who pledged to use legal, sustainable musical instruments. Let’s keep the good tunes on good wood coming,” Markey said in a statement.

Ironically, Michelle Obama probably used one of these “blood wood” Gibson Guitars, but I can’t find any record of Markey asking her to give it back.

Ed Markey was the leading politician pushing to punish Gibson Guitar for what at worst was a paperwork error. Markey didn’t appear to understand that this was about protecting jobs overseas, not at home. Markey was all on board with the demonization of a U.S. company for no good reason other than that the government could.

In this time of IRS overreach, there is a lesson here.

Speaking on FOX News, Judge Andrew Napolitano said that James Rosen had committed no crime.  As RealClearPolitics captured:

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: There is simply no crime. For the FBI to tell a federal judge that James committed a crime by receiving classified information and offering to publish it, even by asking for classified information, is absolutely wrong. […]

James, like all of us who are professionals in this business have an absolute constitutionally protected right to seek news of material interest to the public wherever that news may be.

Slate points out just how serious this case is.

This has never happened in this country. (Even in the Pentagon Papers case, several newspapers were served injunctions not to publish stories, but no reporter or editor was ever investigated, much less tried, as a co-conspirator.) If the prosecutors go through with their threat, the entire enterprise of national security journalism—which inherently involves uncovering secrets, to some degree—will be in jeopardy.

A DOJ official said that no charges had been anticipated against Rosen, but the search warrant certainly didn’t seem that way.  It read, in part, “There is probable cause to believe that the reporter has committed or is committing a violation of Section 793(d), as an aider and abettor, and/or co-conspirator, to which the materials relate.”

That DOJ official told the Huffington Post:

DOJ regulations require the attorney general to approve charges against a journalist or the search warrant for journalist phone records, but that regulation does not appear to apply to journalist emails. The DOJ official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said no charges against Rosen were anticipated. Language used by an FBI agent requesting a search warrant made Rosen’s reporting activities out to be part of a criminal conspiracy.

“To our knowledge, the Department of Justice has never prosecuted a reporter,” the Justice Department official told The Huffington Post. “No reporter has ever been charged by the Department of Justice simply for publishing information obtained through an illegal leak of classified information by a government official. At this time, we do not anticipate bringing any additional charges in this matter.”

No charges were anticipated, so that made it OK to spy on emails from a news reporter’s private email account, among other things?

While the DOJ has already pursued Kim, who was indicted in 2009 for this very leak, Rosen only found out about this when everyone else did this week.  That said, many questions for the DOJ and this administration still remain.

When the White House leaked a single email about Benghazi to Jake Tapper, it launched a war on Jon Karl and Stephen Hayes because the wording of the email varied slightly from the accounts in their reporting. Their reporting, however, was based on summaries because the originals had not been released by the White House, but both reporters stood by the substance of their reporting.

Karl apologized because while he had made clear elsewhere in his report that these were summaries, he was not sufficiently clear as to this single email.

I smelled a rat in the release by the White House of this one email. It looked to me like Tapper, although a great and fair reporter, was being played, that someone in the White House found a difference in the wording, leaked only that email, then used it to generate a fairly massive counter-attack on the entirety of the reporting.

And I so wrote, Was Jake Tapper played by White House through selective leak of just one email?

Jake Tapper reports that the White House is disputing that the Benghazi talking points were edited in the way ABC News and The Weekly Standard presented them, leading to charges that the emails were doctored. The ABC News source is standing by the leaked emails.

Based on Jonathan Karl’s updated report (quoted below), it looks like the White House played Tapper to create a controversy by releasing just one in a chain of emails.  Regardless of how it turns out, this provides the dodge White House defenders were looking for, and they are relishing it.

When White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer appeared on Sunday talk shows and repeated the “doctored” narrative, it had come full circle. A “senior aide” (Pfeiffer?) leaked a single email to Tapper, the media and other Obama supporters used that planted narrative to bash the entirety of the Benghazi talking points reporting, and then Pfeiffer went on talk shows and drove home the “doctored” narrative.

But that “doctored” narrative has fallen apart substantively once the actual emails (100 of them selected by the White House) were released.  Hayes and Karl wrote persuasive defenses of their reporting, as have others. Jazz Shaw had a good explanation of why the “doctored” narrative does not hold up, About those “doctored” Benghazi e-mails…

Glenn Kessler, WaPo’s “fact checker,” has a very detailed examination of the “doctored” narrative.  Kessler almost entirely vindicates Karl and Hayes, and awards the “doctored” narrative three Pinnochios, The White House claim of ‘doctored e-mails… to smear the president’ (emphasis added):

In early May, Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard reported more details on the e-mails, in some cases explaining which officials were involved. But a central focus of his article was on the different versions of the talking points that emerged from the interagency process. Hayes, in most cases, summarized the e-mails unless quotes were in the House report.

Then, on May 10, ABC’s Jonathan Karl reported that there were 12 versions of talking points, under the headline: “Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference.” That was the key focus of the online article, as well as Karl’s appearances on the broadcast network that day. Karl, in fact, got all 12 versions of the talking points correct.

Karl started the article by citing “White House e-mails reviewed by ABC News.”

Later, he referred to “summaries of White House and State Department e-mails” and then lower in the article quoted from those e-mail summaries directly. As worded, the article gave the impression that these were actual quotes from e-mails.

In particular, Karl quotes Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes as writing late on the evening of Sept. 14:

“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation.  We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”

On May 13, CNN obtained the actual e-mail written by Rhodes, which said:

“We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation….We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies.”

Note the correct version is missing a direct reference to the State Department. CNN, which had only obtained the single e-mail, used strong words in its report about its competitor, ABC: “Whoever provided those accounts seemingly invented the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed.”

When the White House last week released all of its e-mails, it became clear that Rhodes was responding at the tail end of a series of e-mail exchanges that largely discussed the State Department concerns.

So the summaries of the email in question were right, the concern in the chain of emails was about the State Department’s concerns.   That the email did not mention the State Department did not take away from the truth — and since Karl and Hayes only were relaying summaries of the email, they were correct in context.

That, of course, has not stopped operatives like Media Matters from acting as if this were the journalistic scandal of the century:

Kessler notes that the disputed reference to the State Department was not even important, but that the White House continues to cite Tapper’s reporting of the email and also reporting by CBS News to claim that the difference in wording constituted “doctoring”:

While the White House has tried to highlight ABC’s error on the Rhodes e-mail, it is worth noting that it did not play a prominent role in much of the news coverage. (The one exception is Fox News.) After the ABC report, the Rhodes e-mail was not part of the nightly newscasts; neither was it cited in the news reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post. USA Today and The Los Angeles Times mentioned Rhodes, but at the bottom of the story. “Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security advisor at the White House, wrote in a subsequent email that Nuland’s concerns would have to be taken into account,” the Times said.

The article also said: “White House Press Secretary Jay Carney did not dispute their authenticity during a lengthy explanation Friday afternoon.”

White House officials disagreed with our findings. “ABC News reported they obtained the e-mails, CNN reported they were doctored, and CBS News reported they were from Republican sources,” said spokesman Eric Schultz.

There you have it.

A very, very minor difference in wording between the summary reported by Karl and Hayes, which was non-substantive because the summaries were correct in the context of the email chain, was used by the White House to leak a narrative via Tapper which then was used to attack all the reporting as “doctored.”  The White House then used the narrative it planted in the media to bootstrap on the reporting to justify the narrative as a political talking point, to which it clings based on that same reporting.

A completely circular, phony “doctored” narrative was wholly created by the White House and then used by the White House to attack accurate reporting.